Lisa Oxboel

I recently shared with you some of the lessons I learned from my experience having Lyme, particularly around being forced to recognize and respect my limits.

I wanted to share something else I learned that really surprised me and that I believe will be life-changing, if I can just remember.

I’m thrilled, but I am also a bit overwhelmed. As my capacity has increased, there is so much that I want to read, learn and write about. I just want to work more, to feel more useful again.

I was incredibly lucky that I was able to continue to do my coaching work while I had the Lyme, though just not as much of it. Although I have had fewer clients, this felt like such a miracle. It felt so good to have confidence in that area of my life when so many other ones were so challenging.

As I started to get better over the past year, I experienced grief over the life I didn’t get to live in the second half of my forties. I’d had an expectation that those would be really powerful years. Instead they felt like a dormant time, when I was treading water, not producing, creating, or moving forward.

So it was a huge surprise to realize that I actually had been growing and moving forward.

But it was on the inside, and without me realizing it. I had thought I might be picking up where I left off before I got sick, but I find myself at a very different place.

I am older, wiser, more confident. I like who I see in the mirror. I know what I know and hear myself speak with greater articulation and conviction. It seems that my coaching has gone up a level too. I am absolutely loving the work and craving doing more.

I have seen this process so many times with my clients, that when things aren’t happening on the outside, when things don’t seem to be moving forward, it almost always means that things are happening on the inside.

I know this to be true, but I hadn’t believed it was true for me here. It's a reminder that we don’t need to be conscious of this process for it to be happening.

The frustration can come when we are not anticipating this part of the process, when we falsely believe that progress is measurable, linear and tangible. We check things off our to-do lists and feel accomplished. We hadn’t put this quieter time into our calendars, or life plans. Sometimes it’s a day, or a week, or as I have now discovered, it could even be years.

If only we could have faith and surrender to these crucible times. Trust that what needs to happen is happening. I know now more than ever that we are never standing still or falling backwards.

We are growing, blossoming and becoming ever more ourselves – always.

These seemingly dormant times are actually a critical time in our process of becoming.

We are processing, integrating, synthesizing, and healing. But we are also preparing for the next stage, and yes, growing.

I encourage you to trust and go for the ride, and know that it will never follow a straight line.

When things aren’t happening on the outside it means they’re happening on the inside.

Six years ago I was on vacation and something started feeling very wrong. I was slicing an onion and my vision disappeared for a moment. I developed weird pains in my arm. Over the next few days I started shivering as if very cold, but it was eighty degrees. Then the fatigue set in.

I spent the next two and a half years going to doctors and getting tested. No one knew what was wrong.

Because the tests kept coming back as “negative” the doctors gently suggested it was in my head. They put me on Prozac and Klonopin in hope of calming down my nervous system, but that was it. I was a wreck.

It took years before I finally got a diagnosis of Lyme disease. Ironically this happened in New Mexico where Lyme doesn’t even exist, rather than in Massachusetts where it is becoming epidemic. And it turns out that it had likely been in my system for many years.

My health was always something that I had taken for granted. I knew that I was supposed to feel grateful for my good health. In theory, I knew that anyone of us could be faced with a health crisis at any time, but I didn’t fully understand this until it happened to me.

I get it now.

I had always heard about the lessons people seemed to learn from being sick, that they just couldn’t get otherwise. This was also true for me. It took years to start to see them, longer to integrate them. And it’s only now that I’m coming out of it that I’m able to have more understanding.

One of the things about Lyme is that you can pass as “normal.” It’s an invisible disease. It took a lot for me to rally and put myself together to go out and socialize. I couldn’t do it very often because it took so much out of me. But when I was with people, they wouldn’t necessarily know how sick I was unless I told them.

I am incredibly grateful that I still felt my full capacity as a coach. I just couldn’t do as much of it.

The most important lesson for me has been learning about my limits. I had always been strong and able to push through to get things done. The invisibility of the illness allowed people to continue to expect the same.

Because people treated me as they did before, I still tried to push through, particularly prior to getting a diagnosis. It was also very difficult for me to accept and surrender to my limitations.

It has been a good and also challenging experience to expose more of my vulnerability and limitations. Not everyone understood and respected my reality, but luckily others did. I have also had to learn about surrender and receiving, as many of us eventually do.

Interestingly, while I have been going through this I also learned about being a highly sensitive person as well as an empath. I believe now that I had shut this sensitivity down as a result of the negative feedback I had received as a child.

Why was I so sensitive? So emotional? Why couldn’t I just toughen up and go along like everyone else? And buck up I did. At a price.

I knew I was different, and yet yearned to belong and be more like everyone else. Now that my capacity is returning, I am aware of being tested in these crucial lessons. Can I stay more connected to my body and its messages, to my limits? I don’t want to override these messages anymore.

Even if it means I disappoint someone or that I don’t live up to their expectations, or my own, I now know it’s more important for me to stay connected to myself. And I want to stay open to receiving, rather than believing I need to be able to handle it all myself.

Right now, I have been kind of obsessed with crossing things off my to-do lists. I love the feeling of accomplishment and have been getting so much done these days! But, I know I need to be mindful here. I can sense the slippery slope of being the do-er that is so familiar.

Experiencing joy has also moved up my list of priorities.

I want to find and sustain the right balance now, more than ever before and I am choosing to raise the bar on how I live in balance. So I am leaning into the scientist within me to observe myself in this new territory.

Am I putting the right amount onto my daily lists? Is it realistic? Does it allow me to be in flow and ease around the doing? Am I too tired at the end of the day or still energized?

Luckily, I know that the most challenging parts of us are also the best parts. I know that my sensitivity can be challenging, but it also makes me a fantastic coach, friend and person.

So the year is underway. How’s it going? Are you focusing your time and energy on that which is most important to you now?

There are so many things and people that pull on us or distract us, but if we have taken the time to decide what we want to be our focus, we’ll be better able to navigate the many decisions we’ll be faced with every day.

“No” is a complete sentence.

I learned this from a dear friend and am so grateful. Historically, I have had a pretty hard time saying no to things – mostly requests from other people. The angst I would go through to just say no to something that I knew I didn’t want to do, or couldn’t do, was nuts.

I would wrap myself up in knots and come up with all the reasons I couldn’t do something – excuses or reality; it didn’t matter. What I finally realized was that people really just wanted an answer and didn’t need all my explanations or guilt about it. They weren’t feeling the charge around it that I was.

So I started saying no more and without the drama and explanations.

Few things have given me more of a sense of liberation.

I became aware that by claiming no as an option, I was not only valuing myself and my time more, but I was also able to say yes more consciously and cleanly.

As women, many of us have been brought up to be nice, accommodating, helpful, and polite. We learned these lessons well. We are dutiful and responsible. But sometimes we end up wrapping our identity, ego and sense of competence into being very helpful, maybe even indispensable, which can make saying no even harder.

We have conditioned people that they can ask and depend on us to say yes. And this can make saying no even harder.

Deborah Treisman expressed this so well in her New Yorker article, "Kristen Roupenian on the Self-Deceptions of Dating"“…many women, especially young women, move through the world: not making people angry, taking responsibility for other people’s emotions, working extremely hard to keep everyone around them happy. It’s reflexive and self-protective, and it’s also exhausting, and if you do it long enough you stop consciously noticing all the individual moments when you’re making that choice.”

Saying yes means we are feeling clear and should make us feel good, not burdened. I think we’d end up learning that we garner respect, not for always saying yes, but for honoring our limits and boundaries.

When people trust that we will take care of ourselves, they are freer to make requests and know that we will only say yes when we can.

Of course sometimes we blow it and say yes when we shouldn’t have. But that’s okay. The good news is that we still have options, as I write about here.

I have come to realize that where we say yes and where we say no ends up defining who we are.

Where do you need to say no more? What or who do you have the hardest time saying no to?

A couple of months ago, my husband was out of town for a few days, which meant I had three days all to myself. I was sad for about five minutes, and then I reveled. I realized that I could do anything I wanted.

What I ended up doing that first day surprised me. I organized my office. I mean totally. I filed everything that could be filed, I sorted through all my piles of business cards and tossed a lot, organized the rest with headings in just the right box. I cleaned the supply drawers; I created lists, and rearranged things. It was glorious.

In retrospect I realized I was doing the dance. Organizing and cleaning are often part of what I do as my ‘dance’– that thing I do as I prepare to do the bigger thing I want or need to do.

It’s my mental preparation for what comes next. Often, if I have to make an important phone call or write an email, I will find myself tidying first. This can look like procrastination or not focusing on what’s most important, but I have come to see it as my preparation.

By clearing my space, I clear my head. By focusing on minutia, I focus on one thing at a time. I have come to recognize it as part of my creative cycle.

Sometimes when I find myself digging in to a deeper organizing jag, I realize that it’s because I am preparing for something. It could be a bigger shift of my focus, or the start of a new project. Organizing is always grounding and clarifying for me.

Of course there is a fine line and a slippery slope between preparing and procrastination and avoidance, so we do need to be mindful here.

I believe that having a clean slate allows us to move forward in a bigger way.

It is also just a great way to get energy moving. Sometimes when we don’t know how to get started on a project, the best thing to do is to organize – your space, your office, your to-do list or the project itself.

Getting organized is a fantastic way to shift energy and get yourself going.

For years my husband and I grappled with the idea of moving from western Massachusetts out to Taos. After coming to Taos on our honeymoon and absolutely falling in love with it, we made a trip every year. It wasn’t so much a vacation as a pilgrimage.

We felt this visceral pull to the place, and couldn’t help but look at real estate ads every time we came, and we definitely thought about moving. But after making lists of pros and cons, talking and analyzing we always came to the same conclusion: sadly, it just didn’t make sense to leave the wonderful life we had established, and the many family, friends, and community connections.

Finally in 2013, on our annual trip I just got frustrated with the confusion and ongoing analysis.

I threw up my hands and remembered, Oh, ask for Guidance!

And so we did. We asked the question and opened.

The next 24 hours we were bombarded by signs and messages that we were in fact being called to move to Taos.

Wait, what? You mean we could move here? In a strange way, it had never really occurred to me that we really could.

I was ecstatic. I have rarely felt so free or excited about anything.

It didn’t make sense on paper. And yet, we felt called in some way that we couldn’t explain. We had to let go of the analyzing and surrender to what was true.

I find that when I am most impatient to figure something out, I tend to lean heavily on my mind and analysis, but this can lead to mental spinning and more confusion. I have learned that our rational minds can’t always lead us where we need to go.

Clarity can be elusive at times. One of the best strategies I know for dealing with the frustration of not getting clear on something we need to make a decision about is to lean into our intuition.

In this time of information overload, it is also increasingly important that we practice good discernment. We need to trust ourselves to discern what is true, what resonates, and where we should be putting our attention.

So here are some more intuitive options for making decisions:

• Define the question you want to answer.

• Write it down and decide to be with the question for a period of time.

• Listen deeply.

• Be still and quiet.

• Be curious.

• Meditate.

• Stop trying to figure it out.

• Journal, allowing unedited ideas.

• Revisit or explore your values as possible criteria for making the decision.

• Pay attention with all of your senses – not just your mind – and notice signs and messages all around you.

I also felt huge, which in my family was uncomfortable. My family is on the very petite side while I am actually average size. My dad used to call me Big Bertha. I don’t think he meant this in a derogatory way, but women are sensitive to such monikers.

I had three beautiful, petite, slender, athletic younger sisters. It was brutal. I was more fair skinned, less blond, had more of a belly, and did ballet and theater instead of sports.

Feeling unattractive lowered my self-esteem and fed my wanting to be smaller and take up less space, maybe even just be invisible. And I did play small.

One summer during college I was doing geology fieldwork in Montana. I had an incredible experience. I stood in the mirror of the women’s bathroom with my two friends and fellow geologists – my small friend, Elizabeth, and my big friend, Mary. And though Elizabeth was slightly shorter than I, I was actually smaller than my small friend!

This was absolutely mind blowing. I felt like a foot of me was cut away in that instant. I realized that I had just been wrong in my perception of myself. Once I saw the truth in the mirror, I knew the truth. This is how I know that so many of us, particularly women, are wrong about our sizes and what we really look like.

As I have gotten older, and grown more into myself. I have let go of so much comparison. I have come to appreciate all the different kinds of beauty that I have seen in people. And as Kahlil Gibran says, "Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart." Inner beauty truly does translate to outer beauty.

In the last few years I have been feeling more beautiful than ever before. I’m not sure why or how, but I find I catch myself in the mirror sometimes and am often pleasantly surprised. Oh, wow, not bad. Actually, I like how I look. I never thought this would be possible.

I was recently at a local hot springs, Ojo Caliente. People of all shapes, sizes, ages, and ethnicities, were walking around in bathing suits and soaking in the pools. I always find it rather fascinating and refreshing to see this range of humanness, as it is a rare sight in our culture.

I realized that the most beautiful women were not the thinnest or prettiest – but rather the women who looked like they were fully inhabiting their bodies, walking without self-consciousness, being who they were without hiding or apologizing. This was not the first time I saw this, but it somehow penetrated my psyche on a deeper level.

That day I decided to be beautiful.

I realized that there is some choice in this. I didn’t know that. So why not? And now I wonder what other choices I may have in my judgments about myself.

I choose to allow myself to be seen, not to hide or shrink. To take up space and walk with pride, head held high and standing tall. I will not cover my body and try to disguise it.

I am a woman and this is what a woman looks like.

So the ugly duckling really can realize she’s a swan.

I am finding that I need to keep returning to this decision, as my default setting is long-held and I forget. But once I remember, my head lifts, my shoulders go back, perhaps imperceptibly, and I am here.

This has been a very rough Fall for a lot of people. There is much heartbreak and fear and too many people are struggling. But there has also been an outpouring of love, compassion and support—so much good along so much bad.

I generally like the Fall. It feels like a time of new beginnings and I find that after the relative lightness of the summer, it’s actually kind of a relief to get a bit more serious and focused again.

What’s Possible?

When I graduated from college and for the next couple of decades, I found myself asking, “What’s possible, what’s possible, what’s possible?” I would hold my hands in front of my face and widen the view with each repeated question.

I had been trying to expand what I believed was possible, knowing that my mind and expectations were limiting me. This ultimately led me to want to help others change what they think and what they believed was possible: Coaching.

So I felt an immediate and strong resonance when I came across the Infinite Possibilities Certification Training with Mike Dooley this past spring.

I have been receiving Mike’s Notes from the Universe for years. The Notes are brief emails written by "The Universe," designed to remind you of your power and life’s magic, and they’re personalized with your dreams and goals. I have loved the playfulness and profound, yet simple wisdom and inspiration. If you’re one of his millions of subscribers, you know what I mean.

The training was wonderful and fit right in with the work I already do. It gave me a structure and tools for HOW to manifest what we want. I have said for years that getting clear is 90% of manifesting. That’s why I’m such a fan of clarity! And now I know that it is this clarity combined with maintained focus, beliefs and actions.

The Infinite Possibilities program is about our innate ability to shape our lives and live our dreams through understanding and working with your thoughts, words, attitudes, beliefs and actions.

I am delighted to share that I am now a Certified Infinite Possibilities Trainer. I love helping people own their ability to manifest and work with the Universe and am looking forward to sharing these powerful ideas and tools. I'm incorporating it into my coaching, and stay tuned for upcoming workshops.

More Clarity

This Fall I have also decided to let go of my Organizing work and put all my focus on Coaching. Over the years, the coaching has become the bigger part of my work and now it just feels like time.

I have also decided to call myself a Clarity Coach, instead of just a Life Coach. I am still about life coaching, but I realized that the essence of my work is helping people get clear and make decisions – large and small. The decisions we make (and don’t make) end up defining our lives.

I help people find clarity and make conscious choices in designing their lives. I help people believe in themselves, navigate around barriers—real or imagined, and move forward.